


When You’re Gone

by smallbrownfrog



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Light Bondage, M/M, Secret Snarry Swap 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-07 17:16:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8809276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallbrownfrog/pseuds/smallbrownfrog
Summary: If you love somebody, set them free. If they come back to you they’re yours. Only, it’s never that simple when it’s happening.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt #7 from Themightyflynn: Using heat and cold during bondage to turn each other on.

Outside, it was a rainy, almost snowy day. Inside the cafe, it was warm and smelled like damp winter coats. Harry had spent most of the afternoon staring out the window and pretending to gnaw on something that he only vaguely remembered ordering. It was probably a pastry. At least it looked like something that might have once been a pastry.

It probably didn't matter what it was. Nobody went to La Baguette Magique for the food. In fact it was unclear why anybody went there. La Baguette Magique wasn't a particularly good cafe. It wasn't a particularly good anything. It was a tiny little cupboard of a place that never had enough seats, and had remarkably unremarkable food.

What it did have was a large front window that looked out on both the wet street and the little Draughts and Potions Shop across the way. Harry sat there by the window, staring out into the rain. He knew that there was nothing to watch for, but he watched all the same.

As the street got darker, the potion shop windows came alive with color. The shop lights shone behind the glass bottles till they glowed like stained glass. Even the wet bricks of the narrow street were splashed with bits of jeweled light. 

Three months ago, when Severus had left, Harry had gone to the ministry with him to see him off. That had been a mistake. Severus had held himself stiffly in Harry's hug for a brief moment, then he had pulled away to join the little clump of wizards and witches clustered around the portkey. A moment later, Severus was gone as thoroughly as if he had never been there.

Harry wondered what he had been hoping for. Severus was never demonstrative in public. Harry knew that. And Harry could hardly blame Severus for leaving, when he was the one who had told him to go. He had even meant it. He had wanted Severus to be able to take the apprenticeship. He simply hadn't realized how long a year could become.

The street was mostly empty, but every now and then a witch or wizard bustled in or out of the cheerfully lit shop. None of them would be Severus. Harry knew that. Yet he focused his attention each time the door opened or closed.

Finally, at about 7 in the evening, the lights in the potion shop windows flickered out; and somebody who was not Severus locked the door and headed off into the evening dark.

Harry felt like yelling or breaking something. He wanted somebody to fight. He wanted Severus. Instead, he slowly put on his cloak and walked towards home. His broom was awkward to carry, until he sent it home on its own.

Harry wasn't entirely sure why he was walking, when he could have flown or apparated. He wanted to fly in the same furious way he wanted to shout or hit things. He only knew that he didn't trust his reckless, building need to do something, anything. He still had nightmares about his impulsive rush to save Sirius. Nightmares in which Sirius fell through the veil over and over and over again. And then there was Ginny. If he hadn't been so quick to yell, so quick to accuse — Well, there was no use thinking about that. They were long over.

He couldn't hurt anything by walking.

Over the weeks, walking became first a habit, then a pleasure. He walked through rain and then snow. He left footprint trails across empty fields and along hedgerows. In other, manmade places he left no trace, but he felt his boots hit the hard surfaces in a steady rhythm.

Harry still missed Severus, but he found himself saving up things to share with him: the solemn stare of a winter hare, the sound of bird wings, the crunch of frost-stiffened grass. Harry wanted to give all this to Severus. He wanted to show him the freezing rain that turned whole trees into glass sculptures that were gone the next morning. He wanted to wrap Severus up in the shimmering fog that softened the world like a watercolor.

He tried once to write to Severus about his walks, but he couldn't find the words. Instead, he ended up parroting lectures from auror training. He wrote long paragraphs about the technicalities of tracking a suspect without being seen and how to restrain wizards without hurting them. Sometimes he got frustrated and ripped the letters up. Sometimes he sent them. Sometimes he got a letter in return from Severus. These were mostly about potions and rare manuscripts, written in a stiffly formal voice.

It was well into summer when Severus came back. Outside it was blisteringly hot, but the Ministry was oddly cool inside. Harry met him by the fountain, and this time he wasn't bothered by Severus's public reserve. Instead, he walked right through it and threw his arms around Severus.

Severus looked surprised, and Harry opened his mouth to explain. He thought of all the things he had learned, all the things he wanted to share, but they were too big, bigger than words or the weather. Instead, he wrapped his arms tighter around Severus and whispered, "I have a surprise."

Before Severus could answer, Harry had apparated the two of them home. As they stood on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place, Harry felt the summer heat rise up from the pavement and he felt an answering heat rising within him. He might not be good with words, but there were other ways to say what he needed to say.

"Shhh," he said into Severus's lips. "Just feel." It was what Severus always said when he was about to be more inventive with their sex life. For just an instant, Severus looked at Harry as though he had lost his mind. Then he smiled a long, slow smile and nodded.

The front hall was dim, but still warm with summer. Even as the heavy door swung shut behind them, the gas lamps flickered to life, and Harry vanished Severus's clothes. Still wearing his own robes, Harry leaned into Severus, lightly pushing him towards the stairs. Once again, Severus seemed to hesitate for just a moment, and then he moved with the push.

They climbed the stairs together in near silence. The only sounds were the creak of the stairway and the sound of their breathing. Harry was tempted to let Severus get a few steps ahead so he could watch him, but his need to touch won out. So they brushed against each other step by step as they climbed, briefly touching at hand or hip, or shoulder; until Harry had thoughts about just fucking on the stairs, and to hell with his plans for seduction.

However, Harry did have plans, so he refocused his attention on the beginnings of a wandless spell. Here and there, little sparkles began to appear around them. By the time the two of them had reached the doorway of their room, the air was a shimmering, diamond mist. Within the room, the world was a tunnel carved out of the luminous fog. Only their bed and the wooden chest at its foot stood out clear and firm in the center. Walls and more furniture were still faintly visible, but blurred and softened as if they were far away.

Harry's hand on Severus's back guided him to sit on the bed and Harry drank in the way the room's otherworldly light shone on Severus's pale, pale skin. He was all angles and bones, sharp as a knife under that Victorian skin, but those edges were beautiful to Harry.

The soft leather cuffs and the rope were waiting in the chest. By the time Harry had brought them back to the bed, Severus was stretched out on his back, with his hands held over his head. Yes, clearly he had guessed where some of this was going. Well, Harry still had a surprise or two for him.

Harry put the leather cuffs on Severus's wrists. The snap that had always worked on Harry's wrists was too loose for Severus, so he had to go to the tighter setting of the last snap. Then he tied his arms to one of the ornamental loops in the headboard.

Severus looked so relaxed that he might have been asleep, but his dark eyes were bright, and every now and then he gave the slightest shiver. His cock was definitely awake. It was rising steadily, and the reddened head had just begun to peep out.

Harry spread a warming charm over Severus and the bed, and then a second warming charm to his hands. He watched Severus's chest for more signs of shivering, but he could see the slight lines of Severus's ribs, and the slight rise and fall of his breath. 

This was the landscape he had missed, the pale skin stretched taut over bones and sinews. Looking at it he remembered a different landscape, one he had walked through during the long winter. He focused on that memory: a frozen wonderland where the trees were made of shining glass.

Then he tried the ice storm spell.

Instantly, there was a thin glaze of ice over Severus's chest, as though he was encased in glass. As soon as it had formed, Harry was working on melting it with mouth and hands. His tongue worked over first one nipple and then the next, while his hands slid over the chest. Soon the ice was so thin it looked like a coat of polish, and then it was only the sheen of melted water.

Harry slid lower, leaving a trail of hot kisses and heating charms, until he was over Severus's cock. There he paused to simply breathe before taking him into his mouth. Harry tasted the precome on Severus's cock, and — oh Merlin — that was all it took. Harry hadn't planned it this way, but he was about to come without even taking off his pants. He felt himself falling and rushing forward at the same time. Harry barely had the presence of mind to keep working Severus with his mouth, but he must have been doing something right, because Severus's whole body tightened and he gasped harshly. Then Harry could feel the warm stickiness spreading between them.

They both lay silently a few minutes as their breathing gradually returned to normal, then Severus said, "Harry, that was very — I missed you."

Limp and sated, in sticky pants, Harry just smiled. He knew "I love you" when he heard it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment here or at [Livejournal](http://snape-potter.livejournal.com/3675914.html), [Insanejournal](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snape_potter/1620885.html), or [Dreamwidth](http://snape-potter.dreamwidth.org/923271.html).


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